1:35 Popelnice

The small thing that gives a scene an address

Trash cans are among the objects that immediately tell a viewer he is looking at an inhabited place. A vehicle can stand anywhere, but a row of metal cans against a wall means a house, a street, a lived-in yard. The package offers twenty cast parts, so a group of cans with their lids comes about, not a single isolated piece.

Where to set them out

They work best against the back wall of a house, in a blind alley between buildings, in a barracks yard or behind a field kitchen. The layout is the key: cans never stand in a regular row like soldiers. One tends to be pushed aside, another turned, the lid of a third lying propped against the wall. It is precisely irregularity that turns a model into a real place. If you leave one can overturned with its contents spilled around it, you also gain a small story the eye will come back to.

Combinations and painting

• a metal surface will take plenty of rust at the bottom and on the hoops
• suggest battered edges in a lighter shade than the surrounding area
• a wet patch on the paving under a can will raise the sense of conviction
• add trash, planks, crates or a stray cat

Trash cans do not, by contrast, belong on an open battlefield or in the middle of a field - without buildings around them they lose their point and look like an object somebody forgot to take away from another scene.

The set also suits a practice piece for new painting methods. The shape is simple, there is plenty of surface, and a failure costs nothing, because there is more than one can in the package.

The set deals with the cans, not with the wall, the paving or the inhabitants of the scene.